Moon Conspiracy Getting Realer

Not long ago we partially joked that President Obama’s plague-like fear of returning to the Moon is some sort of conspiracy. It makes more sense to us than staying away from the Moon completely, whether out of budget concerns, ego, or for no reason.

Now Neil Armstrong has told a Senate subcommittee reviewing NASA's new space plan, “A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the President that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program, I believe the President was poorly advised.”

So that’s strange.

Obama’s Moon Conspiracy

As scientists a Moon hoax has never appealed to us. Many argue that landing on the Moon is easier than faking one. We argue that going to the Moon is necessary to the US government, the many interests that operate within - and behind - it, and above all the human species.

In our minds this gives birth to a far more real conspiracy.

Like astronomy, sensing and adjusting for political distortions can sharpen the images being broadcast. When President Obama visited John F. Kennedy Space Center in April to unveil his vision of Space Exploration in the 21st Century, he had one actual job to do. Not lay out a real space vision, but sell one.

Thus a Mars and asteroid landing were deployed for “wow” factor, at which they succeeded. But their future also smashed a gaping hole in Obama’s strategy when he dismissively rejected the prospect of a new lunar voyage.

“I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach - and operate at - a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does.”

This strategy is bogus to the point where we completely doubt Obama’s sincerity. At first we were upset by the omission, but our spirits rose each time we reconsidered the possibilities. What Obama said makes no sense. A lunar landing is central to his vision, the bulk of astronomers and physicists, our own, and the countless people across the Earth working towards expanding the human species.

Which makes leaving out the Moon extremely suspicious.

Perhaps it’s just us (though we know we’re not alone), but we assume the Moon represents humanity’s first real step into the Universe. Unless we plan on leapfrogging celestial objects, a strategy that could stretch our supply chains too thin, the most logical and practical method is gradual expansion.

The Moon is the first stepping stone into the giant river of space - we aren’t going to leap over it. Here Obama tips us off again with fishy behavior.

“The challenges facing our space program are different, and our imperatives for this program are different, than in decades past. We’re no longer racing against an adversary. We’re no longer competing to achieve a singular goal like reaching the Moon.”

Exactly: a lunar “race” is no longer aimed at a terrestrial adversary, but distant comets headed for Earth. We’re no longer competing to achieve a singular goal like “reaching the Moon,” but the complex goal of colonizing it and weaving a human network into the solar system.

It’s as if Obama is speaking in code, the opposite of probable theory. He must really not want to go near the Moon to make foolish claims like “we’ve been there before” and “there’s more to study.” The Moon hasn’t been studied at all, relatively speaking.

Obama’s conclusion then tears his own logic apart.

“Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. (Applause.) And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. (Applause.) So we’ll start -- we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. (Applause.) By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it. (Applause.)”

Though these missions may be successful without lunar colonization, the odds of Obama “being around to see it” seem to rise with it.

Colonization is critical to interstellar expansion at every level. Here micro-gravity climates can be studied extensively and space technology perfected: base construction, transports, greenhouses, and the psychological effects of long-term space living.

Multiple spaceports will spring up in the further stages of lunar colonization, from the original landing zone to commercial, scientific, and military ports. Each will serve as logistics hubs for outer-space travel, linking up to their counterparts on Mars and possibly Venus or Mercury. Enormous time and energy can be saved if humans don’t return to the Earth for every single thing.

Sending mass quantities of supplies from the Earth to the Moon makes more sense, now easily distributed into the inner and outer solar system.

These ideas are far in the future, but lunar colonization sounds more inevitable than logical. In 100 years is anyone willing to bet humans won’t have done so? Why we would only build on Mars and stay away from the Moon? This makes no sense, so why did Obama utter such nonsense?

The US government must already have something cooking on the Moon.

We say this only partially tongue in cheek. Accepting Obama’s defense as is - "we’ve been there before" - is impossible, but maybe his weak defense covers for America being broke. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit he can only do one, not both. So adamant was he in forgetting the Moon though that we can’t help sensing a disturbance.

The question then becomes what’s the plan. Guarding a lunar base would make sense as location can make or break its future. China, the EU, Russia, and possibly India and Japan are known to be planning lunar bases. A policy of denial might be designed to cloak a US base, hard as it would be to fool foreign intelligence agencies.

The possibility also exists that Obama is guarding economic interests.

Less likely is some sort of weapons system, but when it comes to space defense no concept should be immediately discounted. After all bases need defending, and no longer are we in the land of science fiction. 2010 may not be what writers in 1910 predicted, but we’re living in an advanced world nonetheless.

Technology is evolving exponentially and we fully expect be around for a US Moon base. There may be reasons to hide one, but every reason to build one.

Moon-Sized Hole in Obama's Space Vision

So close to a great plan, and yet so far away.

We don’t know the ins and outs of the space industry, but President Barack Obama’s speech at John F. Kennedy Space Center sounds good to us. The White House released its key points beforehand and we agree with every goal:

• Plan for a manned asteroid mission
• Development of a heavy lift rocket
• Goal of sending humans to Mars
• Restructuring the Orion vehicle
• Extend the life of the International Space Station

Doing is, of course, another story.

We recognize the Constellation program, like anything at NASA, was behind schedule. That may not be a valid enough reason to scrap it, but if Obama can create something better then go for it. As long as the US government provides sufficient oversight on private corporations, the partnership could flourish if a whole new industry is created.

Fail though and America will watch China, the EU, Russia, and India fly by.

But our focus lies elsewhere. Later on Obama correctly exposes a false choice: spending on America or space technology in a recession. We’re part of the same fight to breakdown NASA’s negative perception and hold an immeasurable value to space exploration. It’s one
of our main arguments.

“For me,” Obama says, “the space program has always captured an essential part of what it means to be an American - reaching for new heights, stretching beyond what previously did not seem possible. And so, as President, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it’s not an afterthought in America’s quest for a brighter future - it is an essential part of that quest.”

For that very reason we can’t avoid the massive hole in Obama’s space vision. Two fatal flaws: the Moon and money.

Does he really expect to explore the solar system and beyond from Earth, and without a major increase in funding? And why did he give the lamest excuse for not returning to the Moon? "I just have to say pretty bluntly - “we’ve been there before?”

He knows this false choice isn’t the goal at all.

Ironically Neil Armstrong is working a counterproductive Moon campaign, allowing the conversation to devolve around a return trip rather than colonization and exploration. Armstrong was critical of Obama's new plan in a letter to combat his former co-pilot Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin won.

"The truth is that we have already been to the Moon – some 40 years ago," he wrote in his own letter published by the White House.

Both completely avoid the point. "There's a lot more of space to explore,” Obama argues. Obviously, so why does he say nothing is left to explore on the Moon?

All sorts of technology and resources await discovery and testing. Any sustainable habitat for Mars can be tested on the Moon at a closer and safer proximity to Earth. Early warning and defense systems can be constructed. Eventually lunar elevators could be constructed, the designs of which might be applied on Mars or back on Earth.

We can’t be making this up in our heads, Obama’s own statements correspond to lunar colonization.

“Fifty years after the creation of NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite. And in fulfilling this task, we will not only extend humanity’s reach in space - we will strengthen America’s leadership here on Earth.”

Exactly, the goal isn’t just to reach the Moon but to build sustainable and even indefinite habitats on it. Their construction must begin as soon as possible so that an advanced solar network is in place in 2110. Through habitats on the Moon and Mars, Earth’s space program can attempt to fulfill its ultimate potential.

To leave the Moon out of America’s space strategy is contradictory to the end. The goal isn’t to go to the Moon, but stay there and then go further.

“By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start -- we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.”

Lunar installations, several of which being spaceports, would make sure he does.

That leads to the second and deeper problem with Obama’s plan - funding - and nowhere did his attitude bite him harder. Ego should have been suppressed in a politically, scientifically and economically charged environment, but ego has always been one of Obama’s weaknesses.

“What I hope is,” Obama says, “is that everybody will take a look at what we are planning, consider the details of what we’ve laid out, and see the merits as I’ve described them. The bottom line is nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am.”

We’ve analyzed his proposal impartially and, while believing in the need for several crucial additions, we support the rest of it. Obama’s proposal appears rational and he should have quit there. The line, “nobody is more committed to human exploration of space than I am,” is an irrational and desperate statement.

First, making such a distinction is impossible. Second, he’s putting himself ahead of people like Armstrong and Aldrin, who was committed enough to go to the Moon, and all those who make space travel possible. Third, he’s putting himself ahead of us, people throughout history and around the world who dream of space travel. And forth, though he believes otherwise, Obama isn’t putting his money where his mouth is.

Had he done so we might have let him slide.

“We’ll give you the resources to break through these barriers,” he tells us. “We’ll start by increasing NASA’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years, I want people to understand the context of this. This is happening even as we have instituted a freeze on discretionary spending and sought to make cuts elsewhere in the budget.”

Perhaps we’re being idealistic, but his “increase” is a joke. The person who cares more about space exploration than anyone else would put space exploration before everything else. Madness maybe, but suitable behavior for a die-hard. Obama just gambled an extra 40$ billion on top of 100$ billion for the war in Afghanistan.

That’s per year, not the next five, and just Afghanistan. There too Obama has declared no one is more concerned than he.

Can he be both? That person most committed to space exploration would give NASA a 50 or 100$ billion bonus to fund experiments and inventions yet to be imagined. Less than one year in Afghanistan to fund a century of discoveries. Real change would be a dramatic boom, not a gradual uptick.

America must prize discovery above warfare.

The Drones' New World

We have good news for drone advocates, but also for those suspicious of where drones are taking the human species. Their natural habitat is the next frontier, the largest humans have conceived.

Space is drone heaven.

Aerospace engineers, astronomers, and government officials have been aware for half a century, meaning space is also a primary genesis of the drones now deployed on Earth. Thus it’s natural for their kind will cycle back into space after undergoing extensive terrestrial testing, while also entering a new phase of utility.

The time is coming for robotics to do more than collect information from the cosmos, and the place is the Moon.

The heart of a drone is efficiency, a factor that weighs more on the Moon than Earth. Though drones are about to go through a decades long terrestrial killing spree, 50+ years from now they will be as necessary to lunar life as water and renewable energy. No area is out of orbit: defense, science, economics, communications, transportation, recreation, tourism.

And drones’ omnipotent potential makes them the perfect virtual tour for lunar expansion.

Drones - moonbots - will likely outnumber the first lunar team, boosting the productivity of its human members as they set up the initial outpost. Parts of this outpost will already be automated to conserve human energy and time. Autonomous rovers will be programmed with ideal travel routes to designated ice sources and scientific locations, while aerial drones scout for new sources of sunlight, water, and points of interest.

Once additional outposts are constructed drones will serve as their link, transporting people, supplies, messages, and experiments between them.

As the burgeoning lunar colony expands human-drone dependence will reach a level so far unseen on Earth. Though a lunar colony has no defined purpose, science will likely take the initial lead and to this end drones will assist in every conceivable task. They will roam and drill, collect samples, explore dangerous terrain, basically anything a human doesn’t have to or shouldn’t do.

Shadows have always been the problem in terms in solar energy, but it seems feasible to program solar rovers that follow sunlight 24 hours a day. Factory-like greenhouses will also be configured to optimal growing conditions. Drones have become a harbinger of death, but their true essence cannot be obscured - automation.

And the essence of automation is efficiency, exponentially more valuable to life on the Moon.

Once scientific research feels the gains and begins providing mineral data to governments and corporations, efficiency will really begin to shine as a lunar economy starts to develop. This economy might be divided into three sections: discovery, extraction, and production. In all areas drones should be the principle actors, guided by a select team of humans.

It quickly becomes evident on the Moon that drones stand a high chance of becoming the 21st century’s engine.

Parallels to the 20th century are particularly found in the assembly line, a mass driver of efficiency. A lunar factory staffed with humans would be ridiculous unless absolutely necessary. Drone factories are the more logical choice, rows of machines extracting minerals, transporting them to other machines for processing, with no pay or needs except solar power.

Humans would then be free to focus on oversight and maintenance, where their hands will be more than full given the potential negative effects of Moon dust.

Crossing back over into science, drones will also be instrumental in operating spaceports, the colony’s vital lines for transporting supplies to and from Earth.

Once the scientific and economic aspects of a lunar colony are staked out it won’t be long before tourists find their way to lunar hotels, where drones will do anything not required by humans. Pure social skills are precious resources, to be directed towards the guests themselves.

Unfortunately lunar driving could be farther away than tourists hope. More plausible is an automated transportation grid in what should be a planned tourist hub.

Overriding these areas of human activity will be the use of drones for social contact, as the Moon will still be a desolate place even with a permanent population of thousands. Whether scientific, economic, or touristic, drones will lend a helping hand and possibly an ear.

Certainly drones will assist in the laboratory, but they could also be programmed with an ideal or romanticized voice, perhaps the voice of someone on Earth. Stylized after ourselves, drones in 50 years might be able to provide a supplemental level of convincing social contact.

Finally, what lunar colony would be possible without a robust defense? There’s no telling what space debris bombards the Moon over an extended period time, but a large and diverse quantity should be the working assumption. Luckily the US military and other major powers are deep into laser technology, driven by Star Wars (both Reagan and Lucas) and Palestinian guerrillas.

Meteors are the same principle as missiles.

Lasers have been testing in Iraq since 2008, somehow keeping a relatively low profile until the Air Force made waves last February by testing an airborne laser. This was ironic because only weeks prior the Navy had beat the Air Force to its own target. In late January Northrop Grumman announced that its Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD) system is nearing the final design review and was proceeding to testing.

"These reviews indicate that our MLD design should meet the Navy's objectives in future demonstrations," said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts - Space and Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector. "Next we will finalize detailed test plans and move into land-based, live fire tests."

In mid-March more than 30 US government and National Laboratory representatives attended a design review in Arlington, Virginia.

UPI observed, “Laser weaponry now encompasses all branches of the military with a range of laser-based defense equipment already destined for the inventories of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force.”

But what’s critical to understand of laser weapons systems isn’t how far they’ve come from science fiction into reality, but how far they are away from perfection - how much room for improvement exists.

Northrop Grumman, who jointly designed the ALTB with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, explained of the Air Force test, "While ballistic missiles like the one ALTB destroyed move at speeds of about 4,000 miles per hour, they are no match for a super-heated, high-energy laser beam racing toward it at 670 million mph."

Less reported is the fact that ALTB was sent back to the drawing board because it wasn’t good enough. Last May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress that the ABL's range was limited to 135 kilometers, short of the minimum requirement of 200 km. This range was unable to be improved upon to a “useful” degree.

“ABL will be used for more tests this year,” reports New Scientist, “but the MDA's (Missile Defense Agency) latest budget documents reveal it will devote the rest of its ‘directed energy research’ budget towards a new kind of laser yet to even escape the research lab.”

Translation: lasers will be thousands, possibly millions of times more powerful in 50 to 100 years, similar to the evolution of nuclear weapons.

The US military has also learned how to transmit data through lasers, which could provide for faster and more accurate tracking. Mounted to a layered system of drones in space and on the lunar surface, theoretically any target, along with its potential debris, can be destroyed simultaneously.

IAF chief Maj. General Ido Nechushtan might as well be talking about lunar lasers when he told his Conference on Energy: The Challenge of the Future, “To win, we’ll have to invent things before we even know them.”

How the Moon might be militarized by drones warrants separate analysis.

Naturally this whole scenario opens new avenues into space weaponry which could in turn be applied back on Earth, completing the cycle and potentially starting a new one. So whether creation or destruction, the 21st century is likely to be the Drone Century, its conquests unlimited.

Why the Moon?

It was sort of shocking to discover how many people oppose lunar bases. Lunar exploration is apparently a tough enough sell, so much so that NASA launched a lunar campaign in 2006 to re-ignite interest - and thus funding.

“If you asked 100 people why we should return to the moon, you'd probably get 100 answers - or more!” NASA says on its website. “Over the past year, NASA posed this question not just to 100 people, but to more than 1,000 from around the world. Scientists, engineers, commercial entrepreneurs, space advocates, and the general public all provided answers to this intriguing question.”

Culled from the responses were nearly 200 lunar exploration objectives for the Global Exploration Strategy, which is broken down into six themes: human civilization, scientific knowledge, exploration preparation, global partnerships, economic expansion, and public engagement.

It doesn’t take a scientist to see all of these themes are political.

The last theme is of particular importance, being the gateway to the others. Lunar bases, with their astronomical costs, will only become reality when people universally accept their necessity in preserving and advancing the human species. We’ll address later on why lunar expansion is opposed in some corners and a potential remedy.

First, why build on the moon?

We’ve listed our own reasons, most of which correspond with NASA’s and make up a fraction of all possibilities. A lunar base is virtually inevitable in humanity’s future, however long it takes, meaning the primary reason humans must get to building one base is because we’ll need more than one.

The first true lunar base will be no more than an outpost, small capsules that can support a crew for six months. The very first site will ideally be situated on one of the poles and on the lip of a crater, where sunlight is nearly constant and water is thought to be trapped.

Peary crater is one famous candidate for the first site. NASA scientists have also hypothesized that lava tubs could make suitable external structures to house bases within.

But we mean base when we say lunar base, not an outpost, which is why starting the process as soon as possible is so crucial. An outpost could take 10-20 years, the time frame for China, the EU, Russia, and India. NASA’s lunar outpost is planned for construction from 2019 to 2024, but delays are expected.

Then the crew (or crews if an international project) must begin work on a true base that perpetually sustains life, which could take upwards of three decades to construct. We’re talking comfortable sleeping quarters, large chambers for recreation, green houses, and a small fleet of vehicles to compliment the scientific labs themselves.

From there another base will be necessary for diversity and emergency, requiring a transport system between them as well.

All of this could become reality with the right attitude and four or five hundred billion dollars, probably more. And now everything makes sense as to why some resist wasting finite resources on the Moon. A 2008 NASA EDGE broadcast on lunar architecture provides a typical example.

Host Chris Giersch, speaking with Geoff Yoder, Director of NASA’s Integration for the Exploration Directorate, asks the undying question: why the Moon?

“We talk to people when we go out and we get some skeptics that are not quite sure why we’re going out there and why we’re going back to the Moon since we’ve been there six times. Why go on to Mars? And we actually received a message from one of our Face Book friends. ‘I don’t think a Moon-base is the right first step to our advancement in space.’ He thinks asteroid mining and colonization is a far better first step.”

Many opponents of lunar colonization, judging from the material we’ve read, fall into the Mars or asteroid category. And why not devout resources to the next destination in human space exploration, a target China and Russia are already locked onto?

Costs, of course.

But our support for Mars bases is equal to that of lunar colonization, creating a problem. This grand plan could require trillions of dollars and will never happen with concentrated and coordinated action. Yet space funding will always be a problem until human civilization undergoes a paradigm shift in how it views space exploration.

Instead of having to choose between the Moon or Mars, why not expend energy realigning the priorities of governments, corporations, and societies? Why not make space exploration feel like a near term inevitability rather than a dream? Why not work to free up more funds and pursue the unlimited instead of settle for the limited?

That is our intention, and the first place to start in this long journey is the US defense budget.

Out of nearly 700$ billion approved for FY 2010, all of which survived budget cuts, 130$ billion is marked for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. NASA’s budget, which received less funding than requested because of budget cuts, barely reaches 20$ billion. Additionally the White House requested up to 40$ billion in emergency funding for Afghanistan just for 2010.

President Barack Obama’s surge should push all these numbers up in 2011 and 2012, when military operations and national building projects funded by America are in full motion.

We hear a lot of anger and sorrow that the billions funneled into Afghanistan aren’t going to America’s economy, health care, infrastructure, and borders. It’s time to add space exploration to the list. Imagine what a 40$ billion bonus to NASA could lead to, assuming all the money is used properly and not lost to bureaucracy. Imagine if 100$ billion were transferred from the annual defense budget, which still leaves a huge budget, to America’s space strategy.

Well-funded space exploration should qualify for international defense - and will create far more bang for the billions.

The International Moon Station

There is only place to begin humanity’s exploration into space. Regular journeys to Mars, closer to the Sun, or past Jupiter, as regular as they can be, depend on them. Semi-permanent lunar bases are necessary for space exploration in the 21st century and beyond.

It’s hard to imagine humans going anywhere without them.

The Moon, indeed all of space, is not a political race to be won, given a trophy, and off you go back home. Colonizing the Moon will play an immense role in humanity’s new era in the third millennium. Yet it is thus impossible to escape the totality of lunar exploration.

Scientific experiments in space will discover or invent saviors, oddities, and rarities over the coming centuries that can barely be dreamt of. We could make contact with other sentient life. An age of discovery is rising slowly upon humanity’s long term horizon, but with those types of ages comes war and corporations, usually resulting in a breakdown - or evolution - in society.

The clash of science vs. military vs. economic use of space will define space exploration as much as its discoveries.

The Space Race of the 1960’s to the 1990’s was a prelude to what could happen on the Moon - this time the race wouldn’t be so quick to end. But space politics are also likely to be cyclical, whether corresponding to Earth politics or creating an independent cycle. As such, the reverse situation could occur on the Moon.

America and Russia competed individually to reach space and the Moon, then united afterward to build the International Space Station. With a lunar base, the participants would group together until they finished together, before gradually splitting apart and fracturing the political lunarscape.
Developing the first semi-permanent lunar structures is likely to mimic and expand on the technology pioneered through the ISS. Not the first outposts, which could be developed by individual states, but the first established lunar center. As with space components of the ISS, lunar structures will be standardized and designed to be assembled piece by piece over a decade or longer.

The ISS launched in 1998 and, after installing 16 modules, is expected to be completed in 2011. The total process could take three or more times as long to build a lunar base, but will follow a similar pattern as the ISS.

As political scientists, who participates in this process is of particular concern to us. The ISS is a collaborative of America, Russia, the EU, and Japan. Any new collective will attract the attention of China and India, multiplying the geopolitical match-ups. The ISS has put aside politics because of the magnitude in task and danger, and the first lunar base could rally the same spirit, trumping nationalism and greed.

Conversely, the ISS is not the same premise is a lunar base. They are created with diametric functions in mind. The ISS is has a scientific goal, whether that knowledge is applied militarily, economically, or health wise. A lunar base comes attached with direct military and economic goals beyond research at the ISS.

Humans will go to the Moon to learn but also to land grab, militarize, resource harvest, and to set up tourism. All of these purposes involve capitalism and capitalism is another word for competition, which is a few steps away from war.

Earth’s most powerful states will likely devote their resources to an International Moon Station (IMS). The task appears too difficult for any one entity, government or private, and so an IMS is the rational prediction. But competition exists over deserts, oil, fish, gold, and plenty of other terrestrial semi-valuable.

It is no less rational to predict that the same competition will exist for the Moon’s best views, prettiest natural structures, and best spots for military bases and mining/factory hubs.

Locations to construct solar energy systems will be especially critical to maintaining life on the Moon. No matter what the reality turns out to be, we can also be sure that elements in every world power and major energy/engineering corporation has its eyes on helium 3. Popular Mechanic estimated in 2004 that helium 3 is worth 40,000$ per ounce, barring the market and technology to process it.

The has price fluctuated over the decade, but always remains a dozen times more precious than platinum. There will be competition unless helium 3 is disproved as a second generation fusion energy source. And regardless, humans compete violently and non-violently for any given terrestrial prize and the Moon will be no different.

This anticipated competition is the overriding reason why America, or any super power hopeful for that matter, must be planning for a lunar base right now if it wants to be ready when humans return after 2020. For a while they will be forced together, but for long long is another story.

We have no way of knowing the true motivation of America or China, the EU, Russia, or India at their deepest political levels. But we suspect they think the same as we do.

Moon Monday

There is no reason not to colonize the Moon - except the potential pollution of the Moon and the human species. Yet it is improbable that world powers, in conjunction with powerful individuals and consortiums, will resist the urge to weaponize and resource harvest the Moon. We have little choice other than to accept this inevitable future.

The wheels are already in motion. Understanding the process becomes the next best course of action.

By no means do we treat 2010 as the moment when lunar exploration takes off. Humans have been debating the finer points for over a century, and reports now can appear disturbingly similar to those dated 2000. Individual governments and private interests are still decades removed from establishing a permanent residence on the Moon.

That said, lunar exploration will become reality only through continual determination, awareness, and innovation, and we intend to contribute to the process. 2020-2030 should see significant lunar development. No party can afford to wait, each much strive every day until 2025 and beyond if they want to touch down first and claim the prime real-estate.

Monday night in The Trench is now Moon Monday. Here’s why:

1. Politics
2. Military bases

3. Extra-terrestrial experimentation of:
a. micro-gravity
b. space atmosphere
c. solar rays
d. the elements
e. agriculture
f. military technology
g. space technology

4. Resource harvesting
5. Space port to asteroids, Mars, and beyond
6. Lunar elevator
7. Tourism
8. Human curiosity and competition (intrinsic and political)
9. No Choice (global warming, excess population, low resources, etc.)
10. Inevitable (see above reasons)

These topics and more will be explored every Monday in hopes of constructing a theoretical lunar infrastructure. Space is the ultimate political frontier.